Lord Cobbold: My Lords, I speak as a member of Sub-Committee A, and as one who participated in the preparation of the report published by that committee 18 months ago on the WTO and the role of the EU post-Cancun. That report arose from the atmosphere of gloom following the collapse of the Cancun ministerial meeting but, thanks largely to the determined efforts of Pascal Lamy, who was then EU Trade commissioner, and Bob Zoellick, his US counterpart, the Doha train had been put back on the rails. Those two gentlemen were both approaching the end of their term of office, and were determined to achieve some real progress before bowing out, a feat they achieved in the months following publication of our report, which we hope made a positive contribution to the process.
	Pascal Lamy was one of the most impressive witnesses we interviewed. One of the reasons for the failure at Cancun was, according to Mr Lamy, the inadequate performance of the WTO itself. He felt, for example, that the director-general of the WTO had been:
	"a sort of chief clerk with no power at all".
	In my contribution to the debate in your Lordships' House on the sub-committee report in December a year ago, I said,
	"It seems to me that Pascal Lamy would be an excellent candidate to be the next director-general".—[Official Report, 2/12/04; col. 633.]
	I claim no credit, but I am delighted that my recommendation has been fulfilled. With Pascal Lamy in the driving seat, that particular aspect of the Cancun failure is unlikely to be repeated in Hong Kong.
	The role of the EU Trade Commissioner has been inherited by Peter Mandelson, who has perhaps a special interest in achieving success. He has been a driving force in the negotiations that have been going on behind the scenes in recent months to prepare the ground for Hong Kong. Indeed, he has been accused, notably by the French, of exceeding his negotiating mandate by proposing an average 38.9 per cent reduction in EU agriculture market tariffs, an accusation that has been hotly denied.
	Peter Mandelson has the ear of the Prime Minister, both personally and professionally. The Prime Minister is desperate to achieve a positive verdict on the six-month British EU presidency, and December is a critical month for him, with agreements still outstanding on the budget, the financial perspective and the Doha round. In recent speeches at the Mansion House, to Commonwealth leaders in Malta and to the CBI, he has stressed the importance of the trade negotiations to developed, developing and less developed countries alike. At the Mansion House, he stated:
	"the Doha round is an opportunity to tackle some of the most fundamental injustices at the heart of world trade".
	He also used the cliché that has been referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Radice and Lord Haskel:
	"we know a one per cent increase in Africa's share of world trade will benefit Africa by over $70 billion, three times the aid increase agreed at Gleneagles".
	Even the UK budget rebate is now expressly on the negotiating table.
	It must be an all-time record that a report by a sub-committee, or committee, has been debated in this Chamber on the same day as its publication. In the sub-committee's report published today, we have again set out the aims and objectives for the forthcoming Hong Kong ministerial. For it to be a success it needs, at the very least, to achieve the following goals.
	First, a definite end-date must be agreed for the abolition of all agricultural export subsidies. Secondly, a significant reduction in agricultural tariffs by the developing countries must be agreed, with transitional compensation for less developed countries that would thereby lose existing preferential access arrangements. I hope that will be the answer to the problems raised by my noble friend Lord Sandwich. Thirdly, there should be a commitment to continue Doha round negotiations on further reductions in domestic agricultural support, on reduction in tariff barriers in non-agricultural markets and on opening up the global market in services. These should be completed during 2006 for the reasons expressed by several noble Lords this afternoon.
	This is a tall order, and a real challenge. If these objectives can be achieved, however, the ghost of Cancun can finally be laid to rest.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I echo what has been said: this has, indeed, been an excellent debate. I am grateful that my noble friend Lady Morgan of Drefelin has been able to give us the opportunity to range widely and wisely over different elements of an academic and practical understanding of social exclusion. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, ended with a magnificent quotation, which will stay in my mind.
	It is typical of the modesty of this House that two of our most distinguished academics said that they had little to contribute in the way of experience or skills. Such a comment is always a contradiction, and everyone who has spoken in this debate has brought unique and splendid expertise from many different angles. I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, was able to contribute. Like some of us over the years, he has wrestled with definitions of social inclusion and social exclusion. He brings a European dimension, and we must not forget that it was a European definition that led debate in this country. By identifying changes in terminology and the implications of those changes, the noble Lord has managed to reduce three pages of my notes to one. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said, we have identified many different and separate aspects of this subject, and yet they all have a relationship. If I cannot reply to noble Lords in detail, I shall certainly write to them.
	I want to set out how, in principle, we as a government have tried to tackle social exclusion in different ways and how we have tried to respond to changing situations and to change our definition of social exclusion. With that definition, we have had an opportunity to reflect on the impact of poverty and inequalities while meeting the challenge of exclusion. I believe that that was precisely the point that the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, was getting at.
	Definitions move on as times change and, at its minimum, social exclusion is a literal term. It does, indeed, mean being excluded from participation in what constitutes a decent society, and so it is to do with citizenship. It sounds banal if you describe it as "lacking the necessities" but, of course, a decent home and a decent job are necessities. In the 1970s, the Child Poverty Action Group defined such exclusion in more material terms, including people who did not have a fridge, for example. We have moved away from that as our notions of affluence and the reality of affluence have changed, but we are still facing the constant challenge of people being shut out from the wider community. That means not being able to take part in the democratic process, not being able to volunteer and not being able to celebrate festivals or friendships or, indeed, one's family.
	We have had an extremely interesting debate about multiculturalism, which, I felt, was the beginning of a larger debate that the House would like to have. We have talked about the nature of multiculturalism and how it is changing and being accommodated in our society. But I think that we shall have to leave that subject for another day.
	The point that I am making here is that there is more to tackling social exclusion than reducing poverty or tackling inequality; it requires us to find new ways of supporting families and communities. It is about defining the serious, interlinked and deep disadvantages that create complex and chaotic lives in communities, which are themselves complex and, to an extent, have been abandoned as prosperity, employment and social inclusion have receded. Indeed, it is much more difficult to define inclusion than exclusion, and I think that we will come back to that in the context of the multicultural debate.
	As the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, pointed out, this is as an historic as well as a complex problem. To me, it means not finding a response to people who are marginalised and invisible in our society. It also means dismantling the drivers of exclusion, which my noble friend Lady Morgan identified and addressed in her splendid introduction, whether they are poor education, poor skills, poor health, homelessness, worklessness, low income or fear of crime. I say to my noble friends Lord Bhattacharyya and Lord Desai and the noble Lord, Lord Chan, that the best way to address those is not through specific and boxed-off initiatives, but through making our services and our policies as excellent, as culturally sensitive and as relevant as they possibly can be. Those five drivers are not so far from the five giants that were identified by Beveridge.
	Much of the debate has been about what the Government have achieved. I have been extremely cheered by listening to noble Lords on all sides of the House identify where we have made the most progress. I do not want to reiterate the statistics but we are now offering one of the best situations on employment and unemployment across the G7 group. In Europe, we have a very positive and very high record: 75 per cent of work-aged people are in work and many fewer children live in relative, absolute and persistent poverty. Underlying those statistics is a set of principles that we need to retain because they are the focus of so much of what we have tried to do on the very persistent elements of social exclusion: the poverty of aspiration, the poverty of skills and confidence that leads to worklessness and the poverty that goes with age. They are not so far from those areas, identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, of where we have failed. I thought her condemnation was a little sweeping, so perhaps I can reassure her about certain things.